Ralph Gibson, Trilogie

He has the name of a guitar and of the actor from Mad Max. But this Gibson, surnamed Ralph, became famous through another artistic discipline, photography. At the beginning of the 1970s, when he was 30 years old, while his destiny was still uncertain (even though he was the assistant of Dorothea Lange), he decided to control his creative process from beginning to end. In a very short time he produced three works of art, of which he ensured the image (photos, of course), the text (very terse), as well as the layout. These books with enigmatic titles (The Somnambulist, Déjà-Vu, Days at Sea) unveil a very personal universe without giving any explanations, allowing the reader to develop his own interpretation. When looking at this man blowing his nose in the space of a tree trunk, at this woman caressing her buttocks with a feather, or this hand opening a door, we have to knit analogies with Surrealism and its incompatible reconciliation. This new publication accompanies an exhibition at the Pavillon populaire in Montpellier (until 8 January 2018), and once again invites the reader to make his “own movie”.

• Ralph Gibson, Trilogie, directed by Gilles Mora, éditions Hazan, 2017, 200 p., €35.